1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to targeted consumer marketing.
2. Background Art
Many industries, such as restaurants, hotels, and theatres have fixed capacity and uneven demand patterns. In the periods where the demand is below the capacity, the merchant has excess inventory that will perish quickly. The perishable inventory may include unused tables at a restaurant, unoccupied rooms at a hotel, or empty seats at a theatre. If not utilized, this inventory will produce zero returns. Merchants in the past have tried to solve this problem by offering broad-based discounts to spur demand during low-demand periods. For example, some retail merchants have off-season discount sales. As another example, some airline providers sells unsold seats at a discount over the Internet. This broad-based approach, however, results in a low success rate, because the ratio of number of offers to number of acceptances is high. Further, notification of these broad-based discounts is usually only available to existing customers of a merchant or individuals geographically located near the merchant.